There should be a joke that goes:

Q. How do you know when a book is finished?

A. Never, because it’s never actually finished!

I can really understand now why people spend years never publishing their books because they believe there is still more work to do, changes to be made, rewrites to be done – that the book is not quite good enough yet.
I completely get it, because every time I reread my story, I feel exactly the same way.

This is the final part of my introduction to my debut novel Broken, however it won’t have a lot about the actual story in this post because when you get to the point when you are finally, 100% ready, to self-publish the book, it is no longer about the book.
Instead it is about the formatting and the layout of the book, marketing and a huge number of other things.

When you read a book, there isn’t just a story.
There is the: title page, copyrights, information about the book cover designer and editor, table of contents, a list of books by the author, a dedication, perhaps a preface, chapters, maybe an epilogue and/or an excerpt, about the author, acknowledgement and where you can find the author online.
There is also the book cover art work and back book blurb.

I had no idea what contents I should put into my book.
Firstly, I researched what content should go into a book and then where it should go. I compared how my favourite authors presented their books and found they were all different. I decided to create a spreadsheet of my favourite authors content – to find a pattern. To see where a certain piece of content, was usually placed within a book, the majority of the time. I then followed that template for the layout of my book contents.
At that time, I also found I hadn’t finished writing: the acknowledgements, were a big chunk of writing, that no one would be editing for me.

Once I had put all of this together, the book was ready for formatting to Kindle.
I had no clue how to format my book to Kindle, and after the time it had taken me to work out how to use word press – I was not inclined to spend hours, figuring out, how to format my book to Kindle.
I paid a very reasonably priced company to do the work for me and it was completed in less than a day.

I would highly recommend LiberWriter.

It wasn’t as quick and as simple as it should have been, my fault! As a first time user, I was unsure what I should attach so I had to email them some questions. Then there was a problem with the book cover size (when you think you are finished, you are not truly finished!) and I had to edit my Kindle account in order to see my book appear on Kindle (which wasn’t as simple as it might seem!).

Uploading the book yesterday for formatting was one of the most scary and exciting things I have ever done in my life.
I sat on my bed, in my pyjamas, completing all the necessary steps to upload my work, whilst my heart was beating a hundred times a minute and I had tears in my eyes.

This was the accumulation of three years work.

The completed book, ready for review, came back earlier than expected.
I was full of nervous anticipation as I waited for my book to load onto my Kindle.

The feeling of seeing my book on my Kindle home screen gave me the biggest thrill.

I was full of adrenaline and the feeling made me jittery.
These feelings are still with me now as I write this post and every time I think about my book.
My husband celebrated with me over a glass of wine – he was as thrilled as me.

I am beyond excited, something I have been working towards for the past three years is now being realised before my eyes.
There were moments I thought I could never do it, moments when I thought I should back out and moments where my determination to succeed pushed me on.

In a few short days, my book will be available for presale on Kindle.

Before that happens, let me introduce Abbey and Cole to you and their story:

Abbey is a mess, and she knows it.
Normal is overrated, and life hurts way too much. In order to get by, she makes herself invisible at school and drinks herself into oblivion at home. When her sketchy friends turn on her, she is faced with a new loneliness that is hard to overcome.

Life is going great for Cole.
He has it all, until the day his life stops working out the way he had planned. Looking for a distraction to soothe the pain; he tears himself apart from his family and friends.

When they randomly hook up at a party, it seems like fate. Could life be that simple? Cole’s stubborn streak demands that he gets what he wants, and Abbey is tired of hiding in the shadows, but is that enough to guarantee them their happy ending?